TGIF lunch links (Part I)

It was posted yesterday, but Democracy NC’s Thursday link of the day does a good and succinct job of summing up the latest legislative developments in the debate over ethics reform. Once again, prevaricating right-wing robo-calls triumph over truth and justice.

James Protzman of Blue NC gives Congressman Walter Jones a little well-deserved heck this morning for saying (now!!) that we need to start preparing for BP oil to hit North Carolina. Though Jones is right that we need to be ready to do what we can, Protzman is doubly right in pointing out that “Jones has been in Congress forever and has done next to nothing to make our country less dependent on oil. And now he says ‘we need to know how to prepare for the possibility of oil’?”

Chad Stone at Off the Charts had a great post yesterday afternoon about the folly of using federal deficits as a reason not to pass jobs legislation. “But the deficit complaint was wrong from the start. Our current deficits are manageable — and in fact necessary to help the economy recover from a deep recession. Because the spending in the jobs bill is strictly temporary, it would barely increase our long-term deficits — which are the real budgetary danger — at all (by just a fraction of 1 percent).”

The NYT has a nice summary of the main provisions in the financial reform bill agreed to by congressional negotiators overnight.

And finally, sticking with the southern hemisphere, here is a link to a World Cup bracket that’s reasonably decipherable to Americans who may find a lot of this soccer stuff a little confusing. Go USA!